We’re on the edge of eternity,

says the chaplain at the funeral.

He details the death of a teenager,

life screeches to a stop like he fell off

a Mongoose into a black hole in the blacktop.

The man fell off the edge into what?

He doesn’t say, but speaks with confidence

it’s not the eternal blackness my grandmother suggests.

Memories of my uncle:

his ’65 Chevy, pictures of him brazen and brawny

in his fireman’s uniform.

I visualize where he is over that thin red line:

the edge of eternity.